Posts Tagged campervan

For a weekend of camping with friends we chose Bridge Villa for its convenient location between the two families. We took the Friday off work and travelled down during the day. After an uneventful journey, the last few miles after leaving the M40 took us through some rural picturesque Oxfordshire villages. Unusually for most campsites, at Bridge Villa you just turn off the main road and you’re straight into the site among the pitches. There’s no long single track driveway winding through fields to approach the site, here you stay right in the heart of the village.

As happy campervanners we felt like we always needed the electric hook-up. We didn’t have a leisure battery and our fridge only ran off 240v mains electricity so without a hook-up we couldn’t power the fridge and were worried that we’d run down the van’s only battery if we left the lights on too long and wouldn’t be able to start the engine in the morning. As happy trailer-tenters we don’t have a fridge (or any battery at all) and we’ve started to realise how much we limit our options if we only camp in locations that have a hook-up available – especially at busy times as the electric pitches are always first to go. Also, some sites charge quite a premium for the hook-up which is disproportionate to the small amount of electricity we consume so we’ve started to look at alternative power sources to broaden our campsite options.

Well, after 7 years of campervan ownership, it is with some regret that we are announcing here that we have sold the ’van. After a lot of consideration, taking into account several factors, we concluded that ultimately, the campervan didn’t work for us any longer and we needed a better solution. Contrary to what we originally thought, that solution is not a new ’van, but instead a trailer tent. So, the campervan may have gone, but the camping will continue, as will this site!

For this camping trip we took a drive out to the west coast near Morecambe Bay to visit Gibraltar Farm. As the name suggests, the campsite is situated alongside a working farm. The entrance is hidden away behind a barn and not very well signed, but a fellow camper was able to point us in the right direction. Once you turn the corner behind the barn, the campsite opens up in front of you.

For this camping trip we had some family visiting from Australia and wanted to show them some of our favourite places in the Yorkshire Dales. We settled on Woodend Campsite which is located on a working farm of the same name just past the village of Austwick.